No Doubt

So, Who Should Play the Super Bowl Halftime Show Next Year?

This past weekend, I was honored to cover the Super Bowl XLVII festivities and game in New Orleans for the Houston Press and local TV outlet KIAH (Channel 39). Great fun, if not for locals in NOLA, who were ravaged by drunken football fanatics puking onto their 49ers and Ravens jerseys in the street ... More >>

Bonus Rocks Off 100: Nortnii Rose, Houston Ska's Greatest Hope

Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. Who? Nortnii Rose is the pixie-like guitar player and singer in the experimental ska b ... More >>

Music That Will Officially Be Old In 2013

One of my favorite pastimes is reminding my friends how old we are all getting, partly because I am cruel, and probably because even I am astounded that actor Steve Guttenberg is now three years older than Wilford Brimley was when they filmed Cocoon together in 1985. We can all think of things tha ... More >>

Who Should Play RodeoHouston In 2013?

On October 30, just a few days from now, RodeoHouston will announce its first round of performers for the 2013 edition of the star-studded, yeehawin', nearly three-week event at Reliant Park. The booking the last few years has been getting more adventurous, with the likes of Kid Rock, KISS, Mary J. ... More >>

Aliens Welcome: A Playlist for World UFO Day

Having grown up on Unsolved Mysteries and Time-Life books... as well as being completely ignorant of organized religion, my head is full of a thousand examples of Fortean phenomena, unexplainable happenings, and tales of a eldritch and incomprehensible world that gnaws at the edge of reality like a ... More >>

Artist Suggestions For A New Saturday Morning Tribute CD

On of the few CDs I still listen to in this amazing digital age is Saturday Morning: Cartoon's Greatest Hits. The album, which is still not available on iTunes, was a tribute to all the best cartoon theme songs of the '60s and '70s. Things like Scooby Doo and Sigmund and the Sea Monster, but with ba ... More >>

ACL 2012 Rumors: 10 Bands That Could Make the Cut (No, Not Radiohead)

Before we begin, Radiohead is in Europe for the duration of this year's Austin City Limits Music Festival. They will not fly 12 hours to play a field in Austin. Ah, it just wouldn't be May without ACL rumors running rampant. Rocks Off is guilty every year of stoking the fire, sometimes just one day ... More >>

5 Artists Whose Second Acts Surpassed Their First

Rocks Off has always had a soft spot for Rick Nelson. Although our oldest memory of him is probably hearing about the plane crash outside Texarkana that killed him, his band and his fiancee on New Year's Eve 1985, we're also old enough to remember actually his songs like "Hello, Mary Lou," "Lonesome ... More >>

Buzzfest XXVIII Coming April 21: Korn, Blue October, MuteMath, Cage The Elephant & More

"Which button do I push to make R's go backwards?" ​Yes, we are now on the twenty-eighth Buzzfest in Houston history, with the all-day show on April 21 boasting a lineup that includes Korn, The Dirty Heads, Blue October, Evans Blue, Evanescence and Cage The Elephant, plus undercards Foxy Shaza ... More >>

7 Songs Produced By Birthday Dude Jerry Harrison

If you know the name Jerry Harrison at all, it's most likely from his work as guitarist/keyboardist for Talking Heads. But he's had just as prolific a career as the owner of Sausalito Sound as he has had creating music with one of my favorite bands. After leaving Talking Heads and releasing a handf ... More >>

Rude: Your Essential First-Wave And 2-Tone Ska Playlist

When you ask the younger dubstep generation what ska is, they will usually begin to wax poetic about bands like No Doubt, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish and Less Than Jake - the kind of stuff they heard on their older siblings' stereos in the '90s. Only a precious few will throw the Spec ... More >>

Tori, Tool, TLC And The Other Musical Debuts Of 1992

1992 was a pretty heady year for music in general, with the masses gobbling up all the gangsta rap, grunge, and pop-country they could. That year would see the release of not only R.E.M.'s Automatic For The People, Peter Gabriel's Us, Pantera's Vulgar Display Of Power, but also what is arguably The ... More >>

BuzzFest XXVII

Top 10 Songs About Other Musicians

When you make music your life, it's only natural that you'd look at the people around you doing the same and find someone who just moistens the muse's panties. What we've tried to put together here is a list of those best efforts. Bear in mind, with one notable exception we've steered clear of fell ... More >>

Music's Top 10 Most Fashionable Women Right Now

GroovehouseThe Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O at the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival​Fashion, like songwriting and other artistic outlets, is a form of self-expression. It adds to one's aura; it speaks on her behalf. Yet fashion sometimes gets overlooked in music, and undeservedly so. Follow ... More >>

Top 10 Super Bowl Halftime Shows

idontlikeyouinthatway.com​This Sunday, Rocks Off will be live-blogging and tweeting this year's Super Bowl halftime show, which will feature noted scholars The Black Eyed Peas. We are diligently studying the entire BEP canon and that of all of their solo members, like the dedicated pop histori ... More >>

Slutwave: Pop Phenomenon Or Feminist Scourge?

"Every generation needs a new revolution." - Thomas Jefferson Marc BrubakerKe(Dollar Sign)ha at House of Blues, July 2010​As one of the few women on the Rocks Off writing team, we were fervently proud to take an introspective stab at the new, curiously named micro-genre that 2010 bestowed upo ... More >>

Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm... What Does It Mean?

Happy Birthday to Brad Roberts, lead singer of Canadian folk-pop group Crash Test Dummies, who turns 47 years old today. If you were alive in late 1993 and early 1994, you no doubt remember humming along to the Dummies' hit "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" from second album, God Shuffled His Feet. Roberts has ... More >>

Our 10 Most-Clicked Items Of The Year, Including Some Odd Ones

Wear out that mouse finger​For the record and in case it's not clear, we appreciate like hell all the reading and commenting you do all year on Hair Balls. We love it. What stories most piqued reader interest this year? The internet brings the ability to examine that closely. And here they ar ... More >>

If Your Life Were A Movie, Which Song Would Be The Trailer?

​It started as a whim on Twitter, asking friends what songs would soundtrack the trailer of the movie of their life. Would their life's tale be a rollicking drug-fueled, love-filled adventure backed by the Rolling Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash", or would it be a morose and somber drifting story ... More >>

Merry Christmas From Rocks Off

Rocks Off polled our staff for their favorite Christmas songs to create a playlist for you to enjoy while you open presents, drink egg nog, or however else you celebrate. Enjoy. Ahh, the gift that keeps on giving...​Editor's Pick: U2, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)": Neph Basedow: Ped ... More >>

Top 10 Non-Traditional Christmas Songs

"Baby Jesus, born to rock..." ​Amidst the time of year when we're bombarded with cliché holiday tunes and trite Christmas-carol covers, Rocks Off will now take time to appreciate a few original nontraditional takes on festive songs. Whether they're dismal adaptations of holiday malaise, tale ... More >>

Ten Rock-Star Crushes We Still Haven't Outgrown

​Artists like Elvis Presley, Madonna, and Mick Jagger undoubtedly helped define the consumate rock star crush. But there have been a handful of worthy others along the way - armed with that certain je ne se quoi - who haven't left our radar. Years later, turns out we're still smitten with thi ... More >>

Five '90s Musical Fads We Remember Well, But Don't Really Miss

​A little over a decade ago, swing music made a strange comeback. You may remember seeing people all over dressing like '40s hipsters, jumping and jiving in Gap commercials and most every club or bar was offering swing lessons. It started with the release of the film Swingers, which still mi ... More >>

Sell Your Drum Kit. You Will Never Be This Cool.

​Sure, there are great theatrical drummers in the world. The late, great Keith Moon for one. Budgie from Siouxsie and the Banshees or Adrian Young from No Doubt are certainly up there in terms of stage presence and watchability. But THE man, the king of all that is awesome in percussion, is a ... More >>

Musical Moms That Make Us Melt

​ With Mother's Day fast approaching, we can't help but recognize all the hot rocker mamas out there making music and babies. It can't be easy to write the next great pop song and have a tiny human being inside you sucking nutrients from your body, in the process girding their loins for making you ... More >>

Authority Zero, Voodoo Glow Skulls, The Failed Attempt, Always Guilty

He Said She Said: Songs That Make Us Feel Like a Natural Woman

​ Despite what Shania Twain may think, feelin' like a woman isn't always about going totally crazy in men's shirts and short skirts. The life of a modern woman is often more about balancing work and social obligations, maybe even with motherhood, while still trying to look good (if you even care a ... More >>

He Said She Said: "Fergitrocious" and the Worst Songs of the Decade

In a perfect world, The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" would actually be called "My Bumps," and it would be an ode to Stacy Ferguson's rampant misadventures with meth addiction, because that would be the only thing that could make that horrible, horrible song bearable. You might think it's harsh for Sh ... More >>

Slackfest '09

My Ding-a-Ling: Iggy Pop, Tommy Lee and Rock's Other Dirk Digglers

This album isn't called Fore! because Huey Lewis likes to play golf...​So the other day, Rocks Off wrote briefly about Huey Lewis in regards to the Back To The Future soundtrack, not even thinking to chime in just a little bit about his reportedly huge male member. You know that certain part of th ... More >>

Friday Night Noise: Tchrite's Unpronouncable Take-No-Shit Ecstacy, Ascites' So-Called "Soft Adult Contemporary"

​Tchrite, "Casahdt": Houston duo Tchrite - don't ask FNN how to pronounce that - are an experimentalist train wreck. They sew samples (No Doubt's "Don't Speak," the sorta public-access sound scraps that The Books go gaga over) into woozy patches of static tone. They puree and smush and smash sampl ... More >>

Houston's Rememberances of Warped Tours Past

For the past 15 years, the Vans Warped Tour has been barreling through city after city across the globe creating punk rockers out of boy scouts and riot grrls out of band geeks. The traveling punk, hardcore and emo road show has been coming to Houston since 1995. The first taste local punks got of f ... More >>

Aftermath: No Doubt, Paramore, and The Sounds at Cynthia Woods

Photos by Mark C. Austin Any returning mega-band thinking of mounting a huge reunion tour to drain poor folk of their cash (cough Blink-182 cough) need look no further than No Doubt's current tour and sold-out set last night at Cynthia Woods to see how it should be done. For the bands that we ... More >>

Aftermath: No Doubt, Paramore, The Sounds at Cynthia Woods

Our review of last night's epic No Doubt reunion show out in the Woodlands is coming. We still have the cheers and screams of thousands of women in our ears, so we are a tad wobbly. For now, here's a taste of Mark C. Austin's camera-wielding skills from last night. More is on the way! Mark C. Austin

No Doubt

Summer Sounds

Enough shows to keep concertgoers busy all season long

Idol Beat: The Top Four Results

Photos by Ray Mickshaw/ FoxNo More Pencils: Slash (right) took American Idol's Final 4 to school Wednesday night. "Who will graduate from the school of rock? And who will just get schooled?" Ryan Seacrest asked, rhetorically, at the beginning of Wednesday night's episode of American Idol. We wondere ... More >>

Idol Beat: The Top Nine

Fox Scott McIntyre: Don't go changin'...Remember last week's requiem for the Sarvernator? Turns out that Anoop - Season 8's Great Dork Hope - is in the same damn leaky boat: a phenom before the judges, a lamestain when serenading America. His put-on Usher turn last night cemented his unworthy ... More >>

Retro Active: 1987, Here We Come

Leela James, with Kem

Friday, March 17, Verizon Wireless Theater, 520 Texas, 713-230-1666

Who's Your Diddy?

It's Cristal and basketball with Coach Combs

Playbill

Chiba Pets

Ska-punkers Change Up may be the next Japanese sensation

Don't Choke

Fishbone skanks into town

Oral Surgery

Reconstructing Smash Mouth

Trading Spaces

Monique Powell dumps Save Ferris and heads out on her own

No Doubt

Tuesday, May 7

Rotation

Save Ferris

Dandy Affair